OJ Simpson has, according to the National Enquirer, been having a hard time in prison. The magazine is claiming that some White Supremacists have been targeting Simpson for bragging about his sexual conquests with white women.
“Inmates cheered as a muscular young skinhead knocked him to the ground, punching and kicking him to a bloody pulp and inflicting injuries so severe he secretly spent nearly three weeks in the infirmary before he recovered.”
While the Nevada Department of Corrections is denying that any such incident took place, I know enough about corrections departments to know that their words have as much credibility as Sarah Palin at a Mensa convention.
Simpson is currently serving a sentence totaling 33 years on charges ranging from kidnapping to armed robbery. He is eligible for parole after serving nine years, but it’s not clear if he is going to be released early or not. Given that he was sent to prison in 2008, he will be over the age of 70 before having the opportunity to be a free man again.
The OJ Simpson trials (both 1995 and 2008) were bellwethers of public perceptions on race and justice. The fact that whites and blacks viewed the original OJ Simpson trial so differently is a ringing indictment of our nation’s remaining hurdles in the road to racial equality. Both of Simpson’s cases were met with tremendous outrage from members of the public who never would have cared about the case if OJ had been accused of murdering a black woman. In fact, they probably wouldn’t have cared much more if Nicole Brown Simpson’s alleged killer had been white.
Simpson, who was born in 1947, turns 64 years old this year. He has changed from the strapping young superstar he was back in the 1970s and 1980s to the tired old man who probably lives in fear of those who are incarcerated alongside him. Simpson spent 15 years after his original murder trial being treated by the nation like a guilty man, only to witness a collective smirk of the American public upon his most recent incarceration. America’s anger toward OJ Simpson has been nothing less than an embarrassment that is reflective of a serious lack of class on the part of this country’s citizens, as our nation proved clearly that it has failed the test of the much-touted post-racial America that Republicans once talked about after the election of President Barack Obama (notice they aren’t talking about that anymore after seeing the Tea Party in action). Whether you believe Simpson to be guilty or not, the reality is that the lynch mobs that have served to taunt him are not entirely disconnected from the same mobs that threaten the lives of the first black family in the White House.
I don’t have much respect for OJ Simpson as a man. His denial of the black community for so many years, combined with his extensive drug use always bothered me. I also don’t consider it out of the question that he did indeed kill his ex-wife. But the fact that Americans have ignored the justice system or any sense of fairness to chase down a black man for allegedly killing a white woman reminds me of the so-called “Christians” of the past who once hung black men from trees. Black History Month, of all times, should be the period during which we most readily recognize this troubling historical relationship. The present was created by the past.
